From the Editors At CAVCOE

From the Editors
CAVCOE is very pleased to announce the appointment of three new Senior Associates:
- Marie-France Laurin MBA has planned and implemented demonstrations of autonomous shuttles, and before that, was involved in various projects in the technology ecosystem. She is based in Montreal.
- Lars Christian is an entrepreneur and educator based in Seattle. He has a Masters degree in Sustainable Transportation from the College of Engineering at the University of Washington.
- Silvia Christian has extensive multinational business experience and has managed complex financial portfolios with special emphasis on project and grant management and human resources. She is also based in Seattle.

We are delighted to welcome them to CAVCOE and look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.

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The Mobility-as-a-Service Conference will be held in Ottawa on April 4, 2018. Presented by the Kanata North Business Association in partnership with Invest Ottawa and CAVCOE, this one-day conference will be held at the Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata. The conference follows successful AV summits in 2016 and 2017. This year, the agenda has been expanded to include sessions not only on the technology, but also on the broader deployment aspects including urban planning, transit, regulations, and flying cars. We will let you know when the web site and registration page are ready.

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There were two key events in January that are covered in more depth than our usual articles:
- The tabling of the report Driving Change by the Standing Senate (of Canada) Committee on Transport and Communications.
- The Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

And there were many other news items in January that are also reported below.

Driving Change
Driving Change, a report by the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, was released at a press conference on January 29, 2018 in the National Press Theatre in Ottawa. Barrie Kirk and Marie-France Laurin from CAVCOE were there. The full report is well worth reading and is at:

https://sencanada.ca/content/sen/committee/421/TRCM/Reports/COM_RPT_TRCM_AutomatedVehicles_e.pdf

Barrie provided expert testimony to the Committee and we are pleased to see that key observations and recommendations from his testimony were included.

Some key highlights and recommendations from the report are:

Senators believe Canada must start preparing for the arrival of this technology now to ensure the country is
ready for this upcoming period of technological change.
At the same time it could also become a nightmare of significant job losses, car hacking and the erosion of personal privacy.
One witness (Barrie Kirk) suggested the federal government is trying to move forward with one foot on the gas pedal and one foot on the brake pedal, with Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada trying to stimulate research and Transport Canada focusing on vehicle safety. The committee recommends that these organizations create a joint policy unit to co-ordinate federal efforts to implement a national strategy on automated and connected vehicles.
The report recommended that Transport Canada monitor the impact of AV and CV technologies on automobile insurance, infrastructure and public transit in Canada.
And also that Employment and Social Development Canada continue to work closely with the provinces and territories in order to strengthen retraining, skills upgrading and employment support for Canadians facing labour market disruption.

The report provides varying predictions on when we might see AVs in commercial operation on streets. The report quotes Barrie Kirk's prediction of 2020 and says it is "one of the more optimistic predictions". Another witness pointed out that his company already provides transportation services using low-level AVs. A third witness was quoted as saying "self-driving transportation could take root in urban areas in as few as 10 to 15 years".

A key reason for the range of predictions is the type of AV. Low-speed, fully-automated shuttle buses are already in commercial operation in various countries today. GM has announced (see below) that it will start mass-producing a fully-autonomous car with no steering wheel or pedals in 2019. Even allowing for development delays and testing, commercial deployment in 2020 is highly likely. However, all these early models will operate in constrained environments that have been subjected to very detailed mapping, not just GPS but also visual / image recognition. A fully-autonomous vehicle that can go anywhere, any time, even on quiet country lanes that have not been mapped will not be available until the 2030s. This distinction is important.

CES 2018
Marie-France Laurin attended CES 2018 and prepared this report.

Over the years, CES has become one of the place to attend if you are interested in smart cities and new Mobility solutions, especially autonomous vehicles. This year was no exception. From traditional OEMs presenting their new visions of autonomous vehicles to the technology companies presenting their new prototypes, everyone wanted to show what they can do.

Lyft and Aptiv introduced their autonomous vehicle on the Main Street of Las Vegas. The vehicles had pre-established stopping points where people were invited to try the service.

Navya was also there to demonstrate two of their autonomous solutions: a shuttle that has been demonstrated in mixed traffic in the old part of Vegas since November, and the new autonomous taxi that was demonstrated on a restricted lane in the same area. Marie-France had the opportunity to try the autonomous cab, a more elaborate solution that includes an application to hail and track it. The traveling experience was comfortable and there were additional safety features which made it a good experience. However, the safety features led to a lot of abrupt stopping on the road due to detection of potential hazards; Navya is still working on these elements. The vehicle should evolve in the next months to make the traveling experience smoother.

Many conference sessions also addressed autonomous vehicles and smart cities. There were interesting presentations on new solutions as well as more integrated plans of multi-modal solutions showing what the future may be like. It was interesting to see that the insurance industry has now joined the conversation on autonomous vehicle and on the liability issues arising from these new vehicles.

A key aspect of many presentations was that the environment is always defined by the legislative framework. governments are working on it, but again this year, it is not moving as quickly as the technology is. Next year will be crucial for the legislative frameworks in North America as some European and Asian countries are moving much faster and will therefore attract industry investment.

2018 also marked the introduction of the flying taxi exposition. Various versions of these electric and driverless planes were described to the CES attendees.

In addition to the automotive CES pavilion, for the first time, there was an entire section of CES dedicated to smart cities and located in the Westgates hall. Over the next years, Marie-France predicts this part of CES will increase as the topic builds momentum.

Other News
Aurora Innovation, founded by Chris Urmson (formerly with Google/Waymo), Sterling Anderson (Tesla) and Drew Bagnell (Uber) announced that they have landed partnerships with Volkswagen Group (which includes Audi) and Hyundai to help bring AVs to the masses. Although VW is registered in California to test AVs, the company's disengagement report for 2016 stated that they did not test any vehicles in CA up to November 2016.

This is a further indication that prior AV technology development by major automotive brands has not been able to keep up with the rapid development by small specialists startups, and that the OEMs have to bring in the specialist knowledge if they want to keep up. Previous examples include GM with Cruise Automation and Ford with Argo.

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GM has been increasing the pressure on its rivals to be first to launch an AV shared fleet at scale by announcing that it is ready to mass produce a vehicle with no steering wheels or pedals ready for a 2019 launch. In a petition to the US DoT, GM asked that the fourth generation Cruise AV be given a waiver/variation from regulations that were developed based on human drivers.

Credit: GM

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Waymo made a major announcement with a tweet: “With the world’s first fleet of fully self-driving vehicles on the road, we’ve moved from research & development, to operations & deployment. We're now growing our fleet with thousands more Pacifica Hybrid minivans.”

Waymo now has deals with Avis for fleet maintenance and operations, Autonation for vehicle maintenance, servicing and repairs and Trov for passenger insurance. In other words, Waymo are well on the way to having all the pieces in place to deploy a shared AV fleet at scale and to commence commercial operations.

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Voyage, a startup spun out of an Udacity course, has found a very smart way to develop its testing regime whilst building its business model. Starting in early 2018, it will be bringing its AVs to The Villages, Florida with a door-to-door self-driving taxi service for residents. This is a retirement community with 125,000 residents, 750 miles of road and three distinct downtown areas.

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With the rise and rise of Transportation Network Companies like Uber and Lyft, and before the large scale deployment of shared fleets of AVs, the next major battle on our streets is starting to heat up. The battle for curb space may well define how mobility is changing in cities. The Eno Center for Transportation has some interesting views on how this all might develop.

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CAVCOE was invited to participate in the Autonomous Vehicle Policy Framework Summit held at the Caltrans office in Los Angeles. Paul Godsmark attended and was struck by the quality of the discussions and the frankness of the views and concerns being shared by attendees from the public and private sectors as well as academia. To hear a public sector person acknowledge that ‘AVs could cannibalize transit’ was testament to the open-minded perspective adopted by so many attendees. Because Paul felt a large topic was not fully addressed by the original breakout group titles, he volunteered to lead an additional group called ‘Group 8: Goods Movement and Services’.

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The Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators (CCMTA) and the Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) presented a report titled ‘The Future of Automated Vehicles in Canada’ to the Council of Ministers of Transportation and Highway Safety at the end of January 2018. This report is at a higher level than the Senate report and recommends that federal and provincial governments; develop a National Policy Framework to ensure safe AV deployment, work closely with jurisdictions and international partners to align testing and regulatory frameworks and to continue to promote and invest in industry and academia to test and evaluate AV tech on public roads. We note that the report references a KPMG report that estimates that Level 4 vehicles will be commercialized from 2025 onwards. This does not compare well with the announcement in this issue of AV Update that Waymo intend to commercialize their Level 4 technology in 2018 – some 7 years earlier than the CCMTA / TAC report predicts. This could possibly have an impact on the short, medium and long term recommendations in the report.